Eggs are commonly prepared by scrambling and frying for a main or side dish in meals. Eggs are also included in combination with other various ingredients for production of baked goods or other foodstuffs including omelets, casseroles, pockets, and sandwiches.
More particularly, liquid egg products provide consumers with a convenient food product that exhibits desirable shelf stability and organoleptic qualities substantially similar to whole eggs, without the hassle of preparing whole eggs. Consumer expectations generally drive the demand for variety within liquid egg products, especially as liquid egg products become increasingly accepted by the consumer population.
However, while additional ingredients may be desirable, the color altering environment of egg products can cause detrimental alterations to some ingredients. Ham is given a cured color by the interaction of nitrites and myoglobin, but the color altering potential of egg whites interacts with the characteristic cured red color of the ham product, leaving the ham product an undesirable color, such as green, gray, and/or black. The color altering environment of the egg product may be generally defined as an environment that alters and/or degrades the interior and exterior color of a meat product during storage in the environment and during and after heating and/or cooking after storage in the environment. The oxidative environment of the egg product may cause these alterations. For example, an egg product may be predicted as oxidative by measuring the electrochemical potential of the liquid egg product.
Consumers are informed of freshness and desirability by a food's interior and exterior color. Unexpected colors are negatively perceived by consumers. Therefore, these alterations, such as changing the cured color of ham from red to green, may be negatively perceived by consumers resulting in unsatisfactory sales of specialized egg products.
Food processors spend great effort in working a lengthy temporal period of stability into their products. This effort is expended for both economic and safety reasons. It is apparent that retaining palatability is desirable to consumers, vendors, and processors alike, as it allows finished products to retain their value for a greater period of time. Further, pre-expectation spoilage may make the product undesirable during subsequent purchasing opportunities. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a meat product that does not appreciably change color as an ingredient in an egg product.